2 medical crises can't stop the music

When Sandra Marante had a seizure, doctors found a malformation in her brain that was removed a year ago. (William DeShazer, Chicago Tribune)

This time last year, Sandra Marante, at the start of a promising opera career, didn't know if she would ever sing again.

A music student at Roosevelt University, Marante had a seizure during a rehearsal of "Cinderella," leading doctors to discover a golf ball-size arteriovenous malformation, or AVM, in the part of her brain that controls memory, speech and music. Left untreated, it could be fatal. Surgery risked damaging her ability to memorize lyrics or ever sing again.

But Marante, 26, proved that no medical crisis will stop her career. She had a six-hour brain surgery to remove the mass Dec. 23, 2011, and graduated from Roosevelt's music conservatory last spring. And while she had planned to pursue a postgraduate program there, her career instead took a leap forward when she was invited to join a prestigious opera company in New York.

"It kind of happened all of a sudden. This is exactly what I had hoped to do in the next two to three years, and it happened right after school," Marante said.

The Tribune featured Marante's story in March. The brain trauma was not the first medical crisis she had overcome. In 2006, when Marante was 19, her dress caught fire on a candle while she watched a friend's performance at a lounge. She suffered second- and third-degree burns on 35 percent of her body, and spent months in the hospital and in rehab.

During her recovery, Marante, already a pop singer who performed at weddings and other events, watched a documentary on Maria Callas and fell in love with opera. When Northwestern Memorial Hospital doctors diagnosed the AVM, she was determined not to let the brain trauma derail her career.

"I feel like I was supposed to be in Chicago at the time, close to Northwestern (hospital)," Marante said.

In September, after performing in Italy over the summer, Marante moved to New York to join the Dicapo Opera Theater. She has been performing with the theater's "Opera for Kids" as part of an apprenticeship. Marante had the starring role in "Beauty and the Beast" this month and will perform in "Gianni Schicchi" next month.

"The (theater) owner is really touched by my story," Marante said. "He always tells me that I am a miracle."